The Survivor
by Regans Alpha
Summary: What did ever happened to Tess? She may have escaped from Nny himself, but as she finds out, she's still a prisoner to his ideas...


Title: The Survivor

Author: The Dragoness (aka Cupcake/Regan)

Notes: I don't think I've ever read a fanfic about Tess before. But since she's a character I really like, I thought I'd go ahead and take a shot at what happens after she leaves Nny's house. (most people I've talked to think she died, but if you notice, Anne Gwish spots her at a club in the last comic). Please review! I _love_ feedback!!!

Disclaimer: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is copyrighted by Jhonen Vasquez and all that stuff… yay. =^_^=

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I was alive.

Most people wouldn't think twice about the fact, taking for granted the lives they've trashed and ruined in the race for popularity, acceptance, and everything cheep and silly. The fight for living rarely comes unless it's threatened. That Murderer did the trick in my case. I'd never realized before what encompassed the simple term of being alive. Then again, there was a period of time where I wasn't even sure I _was _living. Or perhaps I was dead all along, and was brought back to consciousness afterwards. Whatever… I wasn't quite sure; the fine line between reality and nonexistence was blurred like the faint stars above my head, morphing in and out of one being into the next. I didn't like it. Life needed some sort of solid substance for me. Me. The little unsure girl on the fringe of being cool and accepted. I'd needed boyfriends, clubs, and in this case, my senses back in order. At that moment, the solid doorstep of house number 777 was an actual blessing for me.

It was information overload; I didn't know _what_ to think. Trust my eyes? No, that was deceiving. Hell, Dillon had _looked_ like a okay guy, but he turned out to have the personality of a stump and an even worse sense of compassion. How could I believe that all those people I saw in that hell, all those screams I heard, the monster, the chase, and the end of the universe weren't just frantic delusions of my own?

Just forget about it, I'd told myself. Push it to the back of your mind like you've done so many other things. Give it a shelf space next to morals and the Golden Rule. Christ.

It was insane. The whole God damned world was _fucking _insane. I couldn't keep a straight thought in my head. Monsters, murderers, blood, and gore whirled around in my head until I thought I might pass out. But I couldn't. I had to get away. Go. Anywhere. Away from the house of screams and demons. Into normal society.

Normal society. Right.

A normal society full of ditzes, perverts, and smoldering egos. Where I can go to nightclubs to impress assholes, chauvinists, superficial sluts, gothic hypocrites, and self-centered bastards. What fun. Great, now my chances of fitting in have dropped from slim to none and on into the negative range. And I knew _exactly_ what the cause of it was. Courtesy of one insane maniac who has given me the scare of my life, aged me ten years in one week, and to top it all off, managed to warp my perspective on living.

Damn him.

I've always tried so hard to be accepted for who I am, and when that failed, simply for who I could pretend to be. It was so easy to be oblivious. Mingle with the masses, and feel like you belong. The currency was material possessions and status; the more you had, the richer you became. Hierarchy could be easily followed by social circles and what bands you played in, or what guitarist you dated. If you were in, you were secure. No worries could arise when your mind wasn't needed to think.

But God, how wrong they were. How wrong I was.

I'd always known that really, but I hadn't cared. Sure, I was revolted by the overpowering stupidity and superficial auras, but I could still breathe. Fill my lungs and ignore it. And be normal. Accepted.

But that Murderer who had dragged me down into the depths of hell did what I was too weak to do: oppose it. Violently. The lower levels echoed with the musical tinkering of the threats of the haters and the screams of the hated. The entire house teemed with the unworthy idiots he'd captured and tortured as he made them pay for their worthlessness, a magnifying glass featuring the insects of society, multiplying the intensity of their pettiness until even I could see the blurred image clearly.

Kirk was just another example of that image, as Dillon had been. Bastards, the both of them. Too weighted down with their own egos to make any difference in their lives, much less in anyone else's. And I there I was in the middle of it, down there because I was hanging around with the slimy weasel. I didn't deserve to be there. At least… I hope I didn't. But after the horror had ended and I was finally free of the house, I realized that I had been enslaved by that magnified image of the world I lived in. I couldn't breathe in its putrid fumes anymore, knowing what they were. Because of that Murderer, I was suffocating in the knowledge. Because of him, I had to get out.

And I hated him for it.

Because of him, I could never go back to the "normal" world I so wanted to be a part of.

I did return to the club one last time to see Anne Gwish staring at me with her disgusting attitude and her equally hypocritical friend Cleo. Mascara crackled as they blinked their eyes simultaneously and asked me where my boyfriend was. How was I to explain that, no, Dillon won't be playing in his band anymore? "Sorry, but he was eaten by a big, tentacled demon living behind a bloody wall in the home of a psycho killer. But hey, if you need someone to strike a few chords, his arms are still hanging there!" I simply told them that I'd broken up with him, but I realized that I could never go back to the life I used to live, one that was so petty that it would never rise above the dirt and grime that held it fast to the ground. I'd seen that life is such a fragile thing; it only takes one moment to destroy it all. Nightmares do exist, and there's so much more out there than this week's fashion or who's playing at the club on Saturday.

Johnny once called me 'blind.' But I'm not. _I'm not! _Because of him, I can see so clearly now that it hurts my eyes to open them to the realities around me.

I can see so much I never wanted to admit was right in front of me.

It hurts to think that I was a part of it. And the only way to stop the pain is to begin anew. Relinquish everything I worked for. Everything I wanted. Everything I thought was worthwhile and real.

I still don't know if I died back in that house. But I do know for certain that my life has ended, and death has begun. So life has been murdered by him, and death has been revived by my own decisions. Thus death is life, and going back to that life will be my death.

And yet, after everything that's happened… who'd have thought that death could be so…

Alive?


End file.
